What I remember most is your laughter, and the way your eyes crinkled
around the edges when you tried not to smile at me. Sometimes it was like I
was the younger of us, and you the elder, the teacher, despite the eight
years I had on you. You were so serious all the time. That was so long ago.
It's hard to believe now that I was ever quite as happy as I must have been
in those days.
I wonder when you stopped laughing. Was it when you stopped loving me? Or was it after, long after, and neither of us realized it until it was too late and too hard to undo?
I remember how summer stretched to infinity, that year, and August's golds looked to last forever. You loved the thunderstorms, and I loved that you loved me. It was enough, then, and it was enough through September, while summer still lingered on. But love is not enough, and the Indian summer faded away without so much as a goodbye.
That summer was too much for two people like us, Lucrecia. I was reckless and carefree, and you were as foolish as I, in your own quiet way. Both of us expected a forever and lived as if we had no yesterday, but all I have now are empty memories.
There was one day, at the end of September, just before the leaves blew off the trees and the grass dried into dust, when we raced the sunset together. The horizon was blood-red, you were flushed, and I convinced myself that each step truly would take me closer to catching the sun and stopping it in its path. Our love was as inexorably fated as the sinking of that sun, Lucrecia, and if we had known it then perhaps it might have been different for you.
My days grow longer, Lucrecia. Every day is harder, every night is full of new nightmares and new regrets, every morning I lose a piece of you beyond recall. You're slipping through my fingers and through my mind with every breath I take and every pump of my heart, like a too-precious sand. Will I fade when you do?
It's a pity.that love was not enough.
I wonder when you stopped laughing. Was it when you stopped loving me? Or was it after, long after, and neither of us realized it until it was too late and too hard to undo?
I remember how summer stretched to infinity, that year, and August's golds looked to last forever. You loved the thunderstorms, and I loved that you loved me. It was enough, then, and it was enough through September, while summer still lingered on. But love is not enough, and the Indian summer faded away without so much as a goodbye.
That summer was too much for two people like us, Lucrecia. I was reckless and carefree, and you were as foolish as I, in your own quiet way. Both of us expected a forever and lived as if we had no yesterday, but all I have now are empty memories.
There was one day, at the end of September, just before the leaves blew off the trees and the grass dried into dust, when we raced the sunset together. The horizon was blood-red, you were flushed, and I convinced myself that each step truly would take me closer to catching the sun and stopping it in its path. Our love was as inexorably fated as the sinking of that sun, Lucrecia, and if we had known it then perhaps it might have been different for you.
My days grow longer, Lucrecia. Every day is harder, every night is full of new nightmares and new regrets, every morning I lose a piece of you beyond recall. You're slipping through my fingers and through my mind with every breath I take and every pump of my heart, like a too-precious sand. Will I fade when you do?
It's a pity.that love was not enough.